The precautionary principle and international conflict over domestic regulation: mitigating uncertainty and improving adaptive capacity.

Disputes over invocation of precaution in the presence of uncertainty are building. This essay finds: (1) analysis of past WTO panel decisions and current EU-US regulatory conflicts suggests that appeals to scientific risk assessment will not resolve emerging conflicts; (2) Bayesian updating strategies, with commitments to modify policies as information emerges, may ameliorate conflicts over precaution in environmental and security affairs.